Within the last several years, wireless networking has become increasingly popular. Wireless networking provides numerous benefits, both in public settings and within a closed home or office network. One drawback of wireless networking can be a lack of security or reduced security as compared to a wired network. These security deficiencies have been exacerbated by the design and operation modes of typical wireless network equipment.
One example of such a deficiency lies in the use of encrypted channels between a wireless client and the remaining network. Historically, wireless networking devices such as wireless bridges or access points have aggregated data and identifiers (e.g., MAC addresses) from multiple connected devices and presented itself to the network using its own identifier (e.g., it's own MAC address). This network address translation (NAT) arrangement results in two undesirable security problems. First, because only a single MAC address is presented to the wired network, the authentication systems in place on the wired network are not extended to the wireless clients. Second, only a single encryption stream is established across the wireless link, and thus security for all devices connected over this wireless link is breached when the encryption for the single datastream is breached.
Therefore, what is needed in the art is a way to establish multiple wireless associations between a pair of wireless devices and provide for a plurality of encrypted datastreams each correlated to a single device residing on the other side of the wireless link.